tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post2468202457710769173..comments2024-03-29T17:12:19.648+13:00Comments on Bowalley Road: Where Is The Mass Movement Against Climate Change?Chris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-11521472776901232982018-12-05T19:29:01.677+13:002018-12-05T19:29:01.677+13:00Protesting against nuclear weapons, was a gesture ...Protesting against nuclear weapons, was a gesture only. Although the baby boomers love to past pat themselves on the back about their efforts, they didn't change the world by declaring their suburb nuclear free. Nuclear proliferation has continued since then and we're arguably closer to an exchange than ever. Those will publicised protests had little cost (and little effect). Obviously changing your entire lifestyle to reduce your carbon footprint is of greater personal cost. Without personal action any mass street protest would be an empty gesture, and I think everyone realizes it. So no parallel between those two issues really. It's a new generation. Facebook will have more reach than a protest banner.James Broadbenthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13637798793924449418noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-27984506850135743942018-12-04T05:50:53.454+13:002018-12-04T05:50:53.454+13:00The climate change issue has always seemed a rare ...The climate change issue has always seemed a rare issue, where the sceptics, the Tony Abbott conservatives and Thatcherite successors are right. Whether the scientists are right or wrong, about the likely extent and progress of climate change, the lefts proposed solution are quite inadequate and insufficient to achieve significant carbon reduction. The extent of change required is not democratically possible and the main serious ideas if moving freight again by rail and nuclear power are really failed steam age technology. War, disease and pestilence might provide an interim solution. The real answers lay in a sort of Brave New World and a total population control. Here <br />in New Zealand and our most similar cousin, the UK we are arguing about ideas and proposals of reintroducing trams and electric trains everywhere and even more unpopular and an expensive cycleway obstacle to the unfetted rights of motorists, Joe blogs and Mrs Bruce trying to cross the cycleway road and its difficult to spot high speed cyclists or skateboarders.New trams and trains had a chance with the public from about 1980-2010 but the window of opportunity has past, this is a much more ordinary country, the age of the babyboomers and their political elite inheritors has passed and the real change makers often post war immigrants from the UK and SA have with their offsprings returned to the Northern hemisphereAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-88781143210194367692018-12-03T19:25:49.556+13:002018-12-03T19:25:49.556+13:00Chris - the "War on Climate Change" is c...Chris - the "War on Climate Change" is code for "Tax the Poor".<br /><br />Why is it, do you think, that taxes imposed in the name of Climate Change are always regressive, hitting the poor hardest? The poorer the household, the higher the proportion of income that is spent on power and petrol.<br /><br />The "gilets jaunes" protests in France are a response to new taxes imposed (explicitly) in the name of Climate Change.<br /><br />In Germany, 330,000 households have their electricity cut off each year because they cannot afford to pay the bills. These are the poorest households. Germany's high power prices are imposed explicitly in the name of Climate Change (to subsidise "renewables").<br /><br />Obama was no different ("Under my plan, energy prices will necessarily skyrocket"). In other words: "Tax the poor until the pips squeak".Paul Deaconnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-31243539896876395662018-12-02T00:20:58.711+13:002018-12-02T00:20:58.711+13:00This noodling along Labour Govt. Governed by the a...This noodling along Labour Govt. Governed by the advice of Clarkists. Not ready for government, philosophically or practically. Since they keep Douglas in the back cupboard, for example. They bow their heads to neo-liberalism's cap. When the reality our ancestors knew in their marrow says: disproved.sumsuchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03133092096534660472noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-90174972320980111472018-11-30T14:19:40.176+13:002018-11-30T14:19:40.176+13:00We were in Paris last weekend when the Yellow Coat...We were in Paris last weekend when the Yellow Coats protests at Macron's fuel tax legislation were going on. Two French news channels ran coverage continuously. Pity I didn't pay more attention inFrench classes so long ago. But the relevance is that dealing with climate change is going to hurt. It's going to hurt everyone, and deep inside everyone knows it is going to hurt. Not just other people in other countries, but themselves, in their own everyday lives. By contrast going nuclear free didn't hurt people in New Zealand. We didn't need nuclear power, we had heaps of clean hydro power. <br /> The necessary changes to society , to cities , travel , the economy to reduce fossil fuel consumption are not politically feasible under our economic and political systems, or probably with the world population as it is. It isn't going to happen. Climate change is going to happen.<br />D J SDavid Stonenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-62738857916927446362018-11-30T13:24:09.808+13:002018-11-30T13:24:09.808+13:00They may have to fence themselves off and live lik...They may have to fence themselves off and live like the groups do in these zombie movies. Maybe we will be like Robin Hood and his Merrie Men, living in trees and preying on the passing, using bushcraft to survive. We have never got over our wild west approach to life I think. <br /><br /> I often wonder how much the offerings on view for tv echo the hidden thoughts and motivations of the public. Crazed zombies driven to throw themselves at the people with resources,; the reality programs trying to reduce their populations by discarding people who don't fit and choosing who is going to be their leader. If you can devise a sufficiently interesting modus operandi you can end up as wealthy as Scientology.<br /><br />That is what we need for climate change. The sort of approach that led people to give up everything for Jim Jones, or Waco David - they can attract followers, and if appealing to the reasonable part of people's brains doesn't work then perhaps what is needed is to go beyond that, to the regressive child brain longing for parental leadership and comfort.greywarblernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-89484162713596635282018-11-29T15:19:54.510+13:002018-11-29T15:19:54.510+13:00I think to some extent climate change is too big f...I think to some extent climate change is too big for the human mind, and always seems somewhere out there in the future. And of course human beings do tend to procrastinate. I don't think that anything will be done until the results are so obvious that no one can miss them, and are hitting ordinary people. <br />It doesn't help that a lot of wealthy people pooh-pooh the idea. Which is interesting considering that many of them are buying bolt holes in countries like New Zealand. I think there are a few idiots who don't believe in it, and a lot of people who play it down for financial reasons while making sure they have a spare house somewhere well above sea level, and in a country that's stable enough to survive without mass disruption.Guerilla Surgeonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03427876447124021423noreply@blogger.com